JUNE - JULY 2006
JUNE - JULY 2006
JUNE 5, 2006
Today was a big day. Nearly a year ago we met with lighting designers. Although we're
trying to scrimp and save at every turn, after attending a lighting seminar, we realized
there is no such thing as a "Lighting for Dummies" manual. It's much much
more than choosing a ceiling fan, a table lamp, and some recessed cans. It involves
a myriad of elements: low voltage lighting, deciding on lamp (we call them bulbs)
wattage, knowing what exactly you're trying to light and for what purpose, and placement.
Waaay too much for us to get a good handle on - especially since we've collected
all kinds of things over the past twenty years or so and we want to see them and
not shove them in a drawer. So, we opted to hire designers. We've emailed them photos
of our "old" place so they could see our collections and also gave them
architectural plans to the house.
Today they made their first on-site visit. It took three hours. There were hundreds
of questions on both sides, a complete walk thru including room color, furniture
placement and artwork. On and on. To make it easier on all of us, I printed out color
pictures from our old home which showed various wall and shelf art as well as the
interior paint palette. In addition, I printed out pictures of our mostly newly purchased
decorative ceiling fixtures. And it looks like I must give up two ceiling fans; one
for the kitchen and one for the master bath, because they just won't "work"
in the space. (I took advantage of a discount and a sale a year and a half ago. They
were special order through Home Depot and they should be willing to let me return
them for a restocking fee.)
It'll be months down the road until the next visit.
JUNE 6, 2006
Think I told you that when our pond was being installed, the equipment ran over a
can of fluorescent marking paint which exploded all over my beautiful burgundy basalt retaining wall. Today Jeff arrived to "undo" the unexpected "artwork"
and did a pretty darn good job.
The landscaping is just overwhelming for me. I tell friends, I'm not into the Zen
of gardening - just want the results. And when you're lugging around hoses and shoveling
compost, it really drives home just how big this piece of land truly is. After a
talk with Jeff, he finally drummed into my head that I'm getting ahead of myself.
We've gone about as "fer as we can go" at this point and must wait until
the exterior of the house is complete before we can make any more decisions. Actually,
I'm relieved.
So now, all I have to do is water what we have already planted which, with the exception
of a few key plants, mainly consists of grasses and wildflowers. But that's no small
order. Since a sprinkler system would end up costing thousands, we've opted for a
"network" of hoses with various sprinkler devices. Hopefully, once these plants are
established, they'll more or less take care of themselves. After all, the surrounding
forest doesn't have sprinklers! I know that the wildflowers will look positively
crappy when late fall and winter set in. And I'll just have to suck it up and live
with that. Already one of the plants Jeff sold to me has been devoured. Don't know
if it's deer or another critter. No matter. All I need is to be "burned"
once and that's it for that plant. I'm not going to add stress to my life by worrying
about it; I'd rather have the wildlife!
Greg has been trying to get back to the roof, but rain has made that impossible.
At two stories in the air, we're taking every safety precaution and I don't want him slipping on a wet roof. But he was
able to install temporary downspouts for our gutters to help defer water away from
the foundation. It's going to take well into the summer, when we've had lots of sunny
days, to really dry out the ground that got soggy before the gutters were installed.
JUNE 8, 2006
It was pouring rain today. No matter, we took advantage of free and easy watering
and sowed grass and wildflower seeds. We were soaked by the time we finished!
JUNE 11, 2006
We now tell people when they ask when we're moving in..."the twelfth of never"!
All we want to accomplish by year's end is completing the roof, most of the siding,
and installing all the exterior doors so that we can make the place weather proof
and secure. And that entails many other necessary steps including installing plumbing
and electrical that go through the roof or exterior.
In preparation for our stone mason, Greg's been using the rainy/cloudy days to complete
the front door jamb so the stonemason has something to work to. Greg has already
put up the Gothic arch top to the door frame and now he's added the final outer piece
and secured it with clamps
to make the bend.
JUNE 16, 2006
While Greg continues prepping the front door area for the stone mason, Excavator
Les put in a full day starting the burn pile, installing a drainage culvert, and rebuilding the north retaining wall which he dismantled for us months ago to address yet another
drainage issue. Getting moisture away from this house has turned into it's own chapter.
I wanted to make sure the heat from the burnpile didn't hurt nearby trees, so I
jumped right in with the hose to wet
them down. Greg insisted I use the respirator because of the heavy smoke.
JUNE 17, 2006
I spent the day cleaning up the mess created when Les installed the culvert under
the driveway and parking pad. This gravel pad had to be reshaped as well as the area
atop the retaining wall repair. This was my project to do as Greg took advantage
of a sunny day to complete the moisture barrier for the front door staircase. The
stringers are made of laminated sheets of plywood and have been exposed to the elements
all winter. Greg needed to reinforce the glue in some places and then decided to
add a heavy duty adhesive for good measure - an ounce of prevention.....
Moving the earth by hand is exhausting work...especially for a species that doesn't
have the upper body strength of a male. Moving rocks and shovels full of dirt is
definitely burning up lots of calories.
By the end of the day, I had put the pad back together...more or less. And tamped down the dirt above the retaining wall with a 40 pound hand tamper (basically
a heavy flat piece of metal at the end of a wooden pole).
And inbetween that, I watered newly planted seeds to get ground cover started and
tended to our burn pile.
JUNE 18, 2006
Greg and I stirred the burn pile and I installed jute (a heavy rope-cloth used for
landscaping) to hide the last of the liner at the back of the pond and also to
hold back bare ground on a steep hill
going down into our ravine. Greg took some scrap wood to make a makeshift bridge across what will eventually be our dry drainage creekbed.
It looks just funky enough to end up being the "final" bridge.
JUNE 20, 2006
More manual labor for me as I dug out around our front culvert in prep for adding
drainage rock around the opening.
I'm also spending lots of time finishing off little landscaping details so that,
come the warmer summer months, I can concentrate on several painting and staining
projects.
JUNE 23, 2006
I've added some more plants to our landscaping, keeping in mind the eating habits
of the wildlife. I've been told they don't like smoke trees or California lilac
(something I never saw in California!). My main color scheme for plants is burgundy,
deep yellow, purples, and blues, and these two plants fit right in.
Meanwhile, native spring wildflowers and foliage are in full bloom. There's foxglove, Oregon grape - with grapes, Nootka rose, thimbleberry, star flower, salmonberry - both orange and red, salal
in flower, and a very nice wild
groundcover. One man's weed is another
man's prized plant...and I'm making friends with as many weeds as possible in keeping
with the natural landscaping, and my hope that it will mean less work for me in the
future.
JUNE 28, 2006
While I've been working at home, Greg is finally getting a good go at the roof since
the sun has been out all week. It amazes me that he's able to do this without any
assistance. Not only the installation, but hoisting up the tools and materials as
well.
JUNE 30, 2006
Water, water, water. I know this is beginning to sound like the Department of Redundancy
Department, but water is a destroyer. It can destroy wood, invite insects, create
molds, erode the ground, affect a foundation. And that's just for starters. So we
are trying to "think like water" and head off every opportunity for problems
where we can.
Case in point, early on we put in that additional culvert at the end of the driveway.
You would think this would have been part of the drainage plan we paid for (and which
was required by our CC&Rs for our particular lot which is at the end of a cul-du-sac),
but it wasn't. We added one anyway. And now we've begun to create the "dry creek
beds" that will dress up these
features. When a culvert is involved, we pile large rocks near the opening to cut
down on the possibility of silt blocking the opening. Then we fill the bottom with
medium-sized round rock called "bull rock" (a smaller version is called
"drainage rock"). That's all we'll do here for now. Later, I'll work on
making this dry creek bed more natural.
Constantly running from one project to another, Greg puts in some time working
on the roof over the kitchen/diningroom
area.
One thing I've learned while working on this project, men can indeed mutitask!
Ever start a task and then you realize you need to complete something else before
you can do it? Well, this happens constantly on a construction job. Before Greg could
make any headway on this section of roof (or any section for that matter), safety
comes first. And so anchors must be installed at the peak of the roof in order to attach safety gear.
Here Greg must somehow contort his body to reach in through the inside of the peak
to install them. I realize while watching him the incredible physicality of this
type of work. You're always bending your body to reach into an area. And then, add
to that, working with heavy tools.
This ain't no work for sissies.
JULY 11, 2006
We're back "on the job" after a much needed week's vacation entertaining
out-of-town guests. Before that, we spent time fine-tuning our "sophisticated"
watering system and Greg continued to do prep work for the stone mason. This requires
thinking ahead to allow for perforations through the stone for various elements such as propane tank dials, septic
controls, and hose bibs to name a few.
Yesterday, our excavator Les dug out the area for our dry
creek for water drainage alongside the
driveway. I have a lot of work to do making this required feature look natural like
my friend Jill's
who did an envious job at her house. Today Les smoothed out our burn pile which is
still smoldering and now there is a summer burn ban. We were lucky that we had a
bit of a shower this afternoon to help quench the fire but I'll still have to spray
it with the hose, otherwise, that thing could keep burning for weeks.
More water stopgaps. It seems there are dozens of ways water can create problems
and we're trying to again think ahead to save ourselves heartache later. We have
added what we think is the last culvert in the driveway. This one is midway between the previous
one we added that runs across from the bottom of the front stairs and under the parking
pad and the one at the end of the driveway. Les dug out a channel, then Greg and
he buried it. Of course, all this digging up of our "interim driveway"
made of big chunks of reject cement a mini-nightmare. These big chunks are now creating
easy opportunities to twist your ankle. We used the reject cement when we first created
the driveway because it was inexpensive and also because we knew big equipment would
be running over it and smash it down. Like so many other projects, it's one step
forward and two steps back. You install/create/design something and then in the course
of dealing with something nearby, your efforts are for naught.
JULY 15, 2006
Don't let anyone tell you different: dirt is HEAVY!!!
I've been working like a dawg digging up wheelbarrows full of dirt and moving them
to another big dirt pile down the driveway. Then digging up piles of drainrock and taking them down to the other end of the driveway to dump into the pit
left from the culvert installation. And then adding sand and dirt at the base of the front staircase. This must be done to
bring the ground to the same level as the cement pad at the base of the steps. I
use a pick axe and shovel, and then down on my knees with small shovels, and then
finally reduced to pawing up earth with my hands to shape the drainage pathways.
I've been trying to design how the base of this staircase will work. There's the
staircase, the dry creek bed just before it, the driveway, and the consideration
of access. Until we actually dug out this creek bed area, I didn't have a good visual
on the size of the area between the base of the steps and the driveway. Now I realize
it's much smaller than I imagined, as you can see from the previous picture. Early
on I was intent on using quartzite pavers between the creekbed and the base of the
stairs. Now I realize it's much too small for that. And, too, there's the problem
of negotiating the creek bed. So we have rethought our design and will continue the
stair treads as a bridge across the creek bed.
JULY 16, 2006
Details! Details!! Details!!! Greg has spent days and days and days prepping
for the stonemason. I can assure you, no contractor on a job would put this much
thought into this endeavor. And that's because this is our house, our
home.
Greg has added flashing where siding will meet the stone. He has added moisture protection,
Grace Vycor, at the bottom of the sheeting to protect against rainwater splashing
up against the foundation and prevent it from wicking up under the stone. He's installed flashing over the garage doors and built door jambs. He's thought in detail where the stone will end and other
materials begin so the stonemason doesn't have to start and stop. All the details
are thought out before he even begins the job. On a typical job "back home",
all these details would have been noted in depth on the plans. That doesn't seem
to be the case here. We're lucky Greg is a master at so many aspects of this project.
But if you don't know how to accomplish something, there's always the internet.
Meanwhile, now that I have a few minutes to look around, I notice that our landscaping
is beginning to "green up". All that time watering, not to mention the water bill,
is paying off.
JULY 19, 2006
Part of the fun of this project is finding places to use elements we already have.
Case in point, we have a cement wall plaque
that was part of our garden back in California. It's a beautiful enigmatic piece.
In order to give it the "patina of age", I took a common fertilizer, iron
sulfate, wet the surface down, and applied a solution of the fertilizer. In a short
time, the iron mixed with the cement and gave it a rusted look.
I knew I wanted to use it here, but where? Then Greg came up with a great idea. Why
not use it to break up a large section of stone wall between our garages? Perfect.
But this set him on a journey of invention. The object was to have water cascade
down her face (as opposed to drilling a hole in her mouth). This would require some
type of half bowl just under the plaque. Should be a simple thing to find. Wrong.
As good as Greg is finding items on the internet, he couldn't come up with anything
that would work. Either it was too big, or too small, or made of resin instead of
concrete. So, the only alternative was to create one. Back to the internet to find
out how to make a cement mold. The answer was sand. And we just so happened to have
a bunch of "natural" sand on the property. Which puts into play a time-and-money-saving
philosophy: use what you have.
In order to make the sand mold, you have to think in the negative. Greg made a simple
box out of wood scraps, reinforced it with a metal armiture, and then filled it with wet-down
sand, adding just enough water to allow the sand hold its shape. Thinking "inside
out" he began to shape the bowl
using simple tools like a plastic spoon.
Next, using a mixture of fast-setting(??) cement with a fiber mesh additive to give
it strength, he poured the mixture into his mold all the while poking gently into
the mixture with a stick to eliminate air bubbles and air pockets. Then he smoothed off what
would end up being the underside of the bowl.
While Greg was making our fountain bowl, he made extra mixture to create a heavy
base for another piece of garden art
- a metal egret which we placed in our pond.
Now the piece was ready for curing.
Cement doesn't dry, it cures. It's a chemical process. We put our piece under a plastic
tarp to seal in the moisture which actually strengthens the cement during the curing
process. I was surprised how hot the cement felt to the touch while it was curing.
JULY 20, 2006
The fountain bowl has cured enough to allow us to remove it from the mold. Then we gave it a good hosing off with a stiff brush to remove any loose material. We also needed to
burn off
pieces of the fiber mesh. As you can see, try as we might, there were still gaps in the piece
and the surface was very rough - unlike our plaque which is smooth. To correct this,
we made a slurry (a watery mixture) of fast-drying cement to fill in the gaps and
then applied it over the entire piece while wearing latex gloves to give it a smooth
finish. Later I'll apply the fertilizer mixture to rust it up so it will match the
plaque.
Greg applied a sheet of the moisture barrier before installing our fountain, taking advantage of any opportunity
to prevent water from seeping into the walls and creating mold. And again thinking
ahead, Greg designed the fountain so the pump and other parts were easily accessible
from inside the garage.
Still working on prep for the stonemason. This project just keeps growing as Greg
thinks of more and more "plan ahead" necessities. This time it's the handrails
that will eventually enclose the front porch. After a discussion of height and placement,
Greg created a temporary piece for the mason to work around so that when the time comes there'll
be space for the installation.
More on the "use what you have" philosophy: because of the dry creek
bed which will basically encircle the house, we're having to build several bridges.
One will be required at the base of the front stairs. Although the finished product
is a long way off, we still have to use the stairs. Using a left over palette from
some building supplies and some scrap plywood, Greg made us a makeshift bridge.
And I'm gearing up for this creek bed project. It's going to be extremely labor intensive.
To get started, I'm picking out some rocks I think I'll be using and "staging" them along the creek sides.
Although we're trying to save money at every turn, sometimes there's a "must
have" item. For me it's a pile of green gravel (front pile). This gravel is hard to find and, in fact,
I've only found it in one place and unfortunately it was two hours from our house.
Translation: embarrassingly expensive. I'm not sure where I'll be using it exactly,
but some of it will be placed around the base of the foundation. In California, I
loved the look of shrubs and flowers planted close to the base of the house - it
gave it an established look. But here again, with dampness a concern, I'm looking
for an interesting alternative. And, the unusual green color will work well with
my hand-picked green rocks for the creek bed, visually pulling it all together.
JULY 21, 2006
Today Greg has me digging in the dirt to expose the base of the rain gutters around the exterior of the house to make sure they're free
of debris and properly connected. Later on these black ribbed pipes will be replaced
with architecturally pleasing ones.
JULY 27, 2006
Big Day! The stonemason has begun! As with anything else, it's the prep that takes the time. Trev's
prep includes setting up his scaffolding and installing the black paper and lath
which will hold the stones, and staging the pieces he'll be using.
Our stone product is manufactured by Eldorado Stone. It's a faux or cultured
product and when done well, you can't tell it from the real thing. Not only
is it easy for the stonemason to install, it's lightweight which means you save
money on your foundation and framing materials. Otherwise, with the real thing,
you'd have to beef it up. Greg and I decided that we are not in love with the
Eldorado Stone escutcheons, the components that hold the light fixtures. They're too big
and the color doesn't work for us. So Greg made a mold out of some foam insulation sheets (again "use what
you've got") and created some custom ones. The square box in the middle allows for the electrical
box. Later we'll add some slurry to match our grout.
Greg worked on mounting the wall fountain. I can't tell you how many trips it's taken to a half dozen
hardware stores to create this cascade of water. Finding a small recirculating pump which didn't require
being placed in the bowl was a real challenge. Trial and error (mostly error) was
the exasperating theme. After Greg got to this point, he realized we'd have to find
something to hide the piping. And we're racing against time with this project because
we don't want to hold up the mason. In the last picture you can see the end result
of the fertilizer application to rust the bowl.
JULY 28, 2006
Trev begins to apply the scratch coat
which gives the stone something to hold to.
Because the stones will be directly below the stained staggered edge Hardie planks,
we need to work on just the right grout color to tie both materials together. The
color additive for the grout is expensive and so we're making up small batches for
sampling and then using it up on the lath. It took three or four tries, but we got
a shade that works. I'll be sure to make a note of the formula for any future repairs.
JULY 29, 2006
The landscaping projects are really gearing up. But the big project of the
day was erecting a snag (a dead tree) we found on the property. Why? A snag is an
excellent habitat for wildlife and wildlife is just what I want to encourage here
at 
.
Les dug a deep hole,
then positioned the snag into it. My two workers, Jarret and Evan, then somehow -
'cause this thing is huge and heavy - held it upright while Les pushed the dirt back
in the hole. Then Jarret and Evan tamped down the dirt to plant it solidly in the ground.
After Les finished, I spent the rest of the day supervising my workers and getting
ready to begin my dry creek bed. In some areas, the drainage channel that will become
the creek bed is deep. In order to save money by saving my decorative drainage rock
(which will represent the water for the creek), I'm packing the deeper sections with
left over reject cement
which was used to give our eventual driveway a good base for the final crushed gravel topping. We're holding off
on putting down the final gravel topping until after move in when the last of the
heavy equipment will be needed. The gravel will be a less expensive alternative to
cement or asphalt but, of course, isn't as long lasting.
JULY 30, 2006
In addition to creating our own custom escutcheons for installing our exterior
lights, Greg also came up with the idea of making custom keystones, a design feature
which will go above the garages and some windows. Since we're and, thus, are using a man
in the moon weathervane to crown our
home, we've carried over the celestial motif by adding some metal stars on the exterior. Greg used one of the stars to make an impression
into the keystone
(next to the keystone is one of the escutcheons).
JULY 31, 2006
With much trepidation on my part, today I begin the creek bed. I've seen
them done poorly, and I've seen them done right. My friend Jill's is definitely done right. She was
a graphic artist and has an "eye", so I picked her brain and took pictures,
and hopefully I can create some facsimile of hers.
and...
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